Thursday, 16 March 2017

Save the Community Pool

Waltham
Forest College is considering closing the Community Pool by 2021 unless it can
A) Be convinced that there is sufficient community need to keep it open. B) Be
convinced that there is an educational need. Because of this possibility The
Community Pool CIC cannot make investments in the site and, without
investments, the cost of running The Pool is escalating.

The
Community Pool is used for vital swimming lessons for local schools and it
hosts Tritons swimming lessons everyday. They also train many
swimming teachers, coaches, lifeguards and pool plant operators. Swimming is a
life skill. Our families are learning to swim here and other local pools are
not sufficient to meet the needs of the community, in the borough.
Regular recommendations, via local social media, demonstrate the
success and fast progress of swimming lessons at Tritons. The
Community Pool is invaluable to the Waltham Forest Community.

It has
been suggested that there is no educational benefit to justify keeping the
Community pool open. Two good reasons why there is most certainly
an important educational need are: A) Swimming is part of the
National Curriculum. B) As described above, the training provided by
the Community Pool leads to several different careers. Training is a form
of education.

What can
you do to help?

Sign and
circulate this petition - By generating enough support, we
can prove that there IS a community need to keep this pool
open. We, the Waltham Forest community, will present this petition to
Penny Wycherley, Principal­ and­ Chief­ Executive of Waltham Forest College, to
indicate how many residents not only want the pool to stay open but to have it
improved and refurbished. A revamped pool will attract more of the
local community and will therefore increase revenue.

Contact
If you believe that The Pool needs not only to remain but to grow, and that the
Forest Road site has the potential to be used more widely by the local
community, let your Councillors and anyone else you think has influence, know
your views. Stella Creasy and Clare Coghill are already in discussion with The
Community Pool regarding its potential closure.
Let The Community Pool and Tritons, know if you would be willing to get
involved in working together to ensure that The Community Pool continues to
flourish. Twitter:@wfcommunitypool Facebook: The Community Pool
CIC Email: info@tritons.org.uk

Please
write to both Penny Wycherley (current Principal, until Aug) at Waltham
Forest College and David Byrne (Principal Designate for the proposed merger of
the Barnet/Southgate and Waltham Forest College - from Aug) to express your
need to keep the pool open.

It is
understood that with one Principal due to leave and another who has not
yet technically taken on the post, they are both uneasy about giving clear
answers until the transition has taken place. This is simply not good
enough. This uncertainty is unacceptable. Waltham Forest needs this
pool for educational reasons and a real community need.

Waltham
Forest College have stated that the "space currently occupied by the
pool" is being considered for redevelopment and that there is "a
likelihood" that The College will enact the break clause on the Pool’s
lease at the earliest opportunity i.e. February 2019. The Community Pool will
then have two years to vacate the premises.
If this happens the value of the redevelopment, which is completely unfunded as
yet, will have to be set against the £300,000 that has already been spent on
the pool, the 22 salaried jobs that will go, the similar number of casual
workers, the 15 schools that have their swimming lessons here, the seven clubs
and the 3500+ weekly pool users. Also the lifeguard training, the courses for
swimming teachers, coaches and pool plant operators that we run.
The planning blight that is now affecting us is preventing investment in the
pool. We cannot invest in energy saving technology or implement the major
redevelopment plans that we have had prepared by Space and Plan architects.
This is incredibly frustrating as we have access to funds and a major backer in
place.

Can you
help us to convey the message that there is a need for The Community Pool and
that this has not been negated by the re-opening of the Feelgood Centre. The
Community Pool and Pool & Track (now The Feelgood Centre) have run in
tandem for a long time and address different needs - even in the area we
overlap, our lesson programme, we have grown 3% spring term 2017 compared to
spring term 2016 and the programme at The Feelgood Centre is also expanding -
the borough is growing.

As well
as the long term concerns we have an immediate issue. In July The Community
Pool CIC was informed that the College were cutting their core hours of
operation and that they expected The Community Pool to pick up the bill for
opening outside their new core hours. They quoted a figure of £50,000 pa. A
group of pool users including Tritons Swim School asked if we could have access
to unused facilities at The College outside the core hours in order to generate
income to cover this additional expense eg sport hall, classrooms, lecture
theatre etc (apart from anything else the fact that a site which has had over
£8 million spent on it since 2012 is sitting empty evenings and weekends is
just wrong), the College trustees gave provisional approval to this idea. We
secured finance to set this up and started working on a contract to run out of
hours provision on a profit share basis with the College. The Community Pool
CIC were asked to start paying the £50,000pa immediately, which it did, without
passing the charge on to hirers.

During
the Autumn term we were told that the contract would not be signed as merger
negotiations were progressing and no contracts would now be entered into by Waltham
Forest College that would compromise their strategic property portfolio. The
lack of a contract meant that we could not access the funding that we had
secured (£30,000 secured with the possibility of £200,000). We have been trying
to open up negotiations with the incoming management team and put in place an
interim agreement. In the meantime the Community Pool reserves have been
running down.
At the beginning of February the College came back to The Community Pool saying
that they had miscalculated the cost of opening the site outside core hours and
it was actually £75,000 pa. This comes on top of an utility bill increase of
£40,000 pa that the College is saying is due to previous miscalculations.
The Community Pool can no longer operate without passing these cost on to pool
hirers.

This
petition will be delivered to:

Waltham Forest College

Principal­ and­ Chief­
Executive
Penny Wycherley

Principal Designate for the
proposed merger of the Barnet/Southgate and Waltham Forest College
David Byrne